705 At the end of August 1993, I had completed my mandatory two-year national service with The Mirror and, therefore, stopped receiving the service allowance. Luckily for me, even though new service persons — Michael MacDonald Tetteh Nyarko Crabbe and Andrews Sylvanus Kwesi Biney had joined The Mirror, I was encouraged to stay on and contribute to the paper as a stringer. I was paid according to the number of stories I filed for the paper. Being a weekly newspaper, it meant that I had to work extra hard to earn enough to take care of myself. I, therefore, went all out and filed as many as four or five stories every week, including front page stories, which had a higher premium than stories that made the inside pages.